Thursday 11 March 2010 06.30 EST
First published on Thursday 11 March 2010 06.30 EST

The Hong Kong businessman Balram Chainrai, who took control of Portsmouth after the club defaulted on loans from him, insists he will get his money back.

Pompey have debts totalling over £80million and became the first Premier League club to enter administration last month. But Chainrai told Bloomberg Television: "I don't feel I've lost the money. I feel the money is there, I can see it. If the club is alive my money is alive."

The administrator, Andrew Andronikou, announced 85 job losses yesterday and promised more if the club are relegated, a near-certainty if the Premier League enforces a nine-point deduction for entering administration.

Chainrai admitted his priority is to find a buyer for the 2008 FA Cup winners. "The main objective is to sell off the club to some consortium or institution or person, who would be able to be responsible enough to stabilise it and run it properly," he said. "I've heard through my lawyers that they are in conversations with several parties. They are deep into talks that could finalise in the very near future."

Chainrai said he took up the offer of equity in the club only because the alternative was to lose the money Portsmouth had borrowed from him.

"There were court cases against the club, it was a possibility that the club would have been wound up, and if that happened everybody would have lost their jobs," he said. "I would have lost my money and my main focus was to actually stabilise the club, to try and get my money back. The only way I could do it was to exercise my right to seize the shares."